Contentions

In the Q&A session that followed her 8th of September speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Hillary Clinton was asked about carrying out foreign and defense policy in an era of unprecedented national debt and budget limitations. She gave a 794-word response, concluding that smart diplomacy would just have to get smarter:

So when you — you specifically say: Well, what about, you know, diplomacy, development and defense? You know, we will have to take our share of the burden of meeting the fiscal targets that can drag us out of this deep hole we’re in, but we’ve got to be smart about it.

And I think from both my perspective and Bob Gates’s perspective — and we’ve talked about this a lot — you know, Bob has made some very important recommendations that are not politically popular but which come with a very well thought-out policy. And what I’ve tried to do is to say: Well, we’re going to try to be smarter, more effective. …

And so, you know, we have to get a more sensible, comprehensive approach, and you know, Bob and I have talked about, you know, trying to figure out how to present a national-security budget. … So let’s start thinking from a budget perspective about how to be more integrated.

Students of foreign policy may be bemused and somewhat alarmed that the secretary of state needed six “you knows” to convey that we would have to “be smart about it,” “try to be smarter,” be “more effective,” get a “more sensible, comprehensive approach,” and try to “figure out” how to present a national-security budget.

Perhaps they will be comforted, however, that she rolled out the biggest word in the Department’s arsenal of adjectives to describe what she had concluded: we have to be more “robust” in meeting our responsibilities.